Panel Proposes Measures to Curb Adverse Effects of 710 Extension : Transportation: Suggestions include reducing width of the roadway and creating tunnels to save several historic structures and homes. Residents in South Pasadena, which the route would split in half, remain critical.

In the long-running saga over the proposed extension of the Long Beach Freeway, an advisory panel has recommended eliminating trucks, narrowing the roadway and building tunnels in six locations to lessen adverse effects on the environment and on historic structures in Los Angeles and the western San Gabriel Valley.

The panel, set up last year at the behest of federal highway officials, released an inch-thick list of suggestions on Wednesday to the praise of freeway supporters and to the dismay of opponents.

The report advocates an eight-lane freeway--including two high-occupancy vehicle lanes for buses, vans and car pools--that would go from the Los Angeles-Alhambra border on the south to Pasadena on the north. First proposed as early as the 1940s, the road would complete a 6.2-mile gap between the San Bernardino Freeway and the Foothill Freeway.

Critics, especially those in South Pasadena where the route would cut the city in half, have argued that the roadway cannot be built without destroying the nature of the tiny community, population 24,000. They also complain that it would destroy historic neighborhoods in Pasadena and in the El Sereno section of Los Angeles.

Supporters, especially those in Alhambra and among state highway officials, have said the region is choking with traffic and that the roadway should have been finished long ago. Congestion around downtown Los Angeles, as well as in the San Gabriel Valley, will be lessened with the extension, they say.

Early last year, Gov. Pete Wilson directed state transportation officials to take “all necessary steps” to complete the freeway. Citing incomplete environmental studies, South Pasadena won an injunction in 1973 blocking the project. Since then, the state has been trying to complete the studies and gain final approval and federal support for the extension, which will cost an estimated $630 million.

Last spring, the federal government gave its formal approval of an environmental study.

In recent years the debate has taken on national implications as the National Trust for Historic Preservation has declared South Pasadena one of the country’s “endangered places” because of the proposed extension.

The committee--made up of representatives of the divergent viewpoints on the issue--acknowledged that the proposed roadway’s “impact . . . will be significant in the local communities.”

However, the panel said that by following its recommendations, highway planners could prevent the destruction or displacement of 379 residential units out of the 1,426 units targeted under the plan released last year by the California Department of Transportation.

In addition, the committee said that 12 out of 52 historic properties could be saved. However, about two dozen of them might have to be moved. And the potential exists, the report said, for an additional 46 historic properties to be adversely affected.

Along the proposed route are scores of historic structures, many of them classic Craftsman bungalows and Mediterranean-revival houses, including ones designed by renowned architects Charles and Henry Greene and Rudolf Schindler.

Caltrans officials have said they would do everything they could to move historic buildings and to restore them in locations similar to their original surroundings.

Starting from last September, the committee held 13 meetings, many of them lengthy and contentious. When the committee had finished its last formal meeting, three of the 13 members--including two from South Pasadena and one from the Sierra Club--had quit in protest.

South Pasadena officials were irate Wednesday, saying that their viewpoint had been eliminated from the report.

“This is the ultimate dishonest act,” said South Pasadena Mayor James Hodge. “The freeway report has been released without the common courtesy of asking for our concerns.”

Caltrans officials said South Pasadena gave up its voice by dropping out of the committee earlier this year. Russell Snyder, a Caltrans spokesman said, “It goes without saying they were given ample opportunity to participate.”

Among the report’s recommendations were:

* Reducing the width of the proposed roadway by 34 feet, making it 142 feet wide.

* Eliminating the intersection with the Pasadena Freeway.

* Creating six “cut and cover” tunnels, by building the roadway below grade and then covering it. In several of the locations, historic structures would be saved from the road’s path or they would be moved and then placed on top of the wide surfaces created by the tunnels.

* Developing a job-training and placement program to help those adversely affected by the roadway.

* Compensating school districts for their net revenue losses for a 10-year period. This is estimated to cost between $4.1 million and $4.7 million.

Committee member Elizabeth Merritt said the group came up with some useful recommendations, given that federal and state planners would not allow it to consider not building the freeway.

However, Merritt, the associate counsel to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said: “We feel the cost of the freeway--the loss of around 1,000 homes--is too high a price to pay.”

South Pasadena City Manager Kenneth Farfsing was even more blunt.

“Balderdash,” he said of the report. “It doesn’t explain how they plan to ban trucks.”

He also questioned the regional significance of the route. “If it does not interchange with the Pasadena Freeway, what is its significance?” he asked.

But Alhambra City Manager Julio Fuentes praised the report as making “great progress” toward the completion of the freeway. He said the advisory panel had substantially lessened the adverse effects of the proposed freeway extension.

Fuentes went so far as to suggest that the freeway would “blend in with the architecture of South Pasadena.”

Michael Messina, one of Alhambra’s two committee members and a vocal supporter of the project, said a close study of the report will show that the committee tried to address complaints raised by the project’s opponents.

“If people were reasonable,” he said, “they would see we made one hell of an effort.”

Once the road is built, he said, “if you live in South Pasadena, you’ll never know the freeway is there.”

For Alhambra, he said, “it will get the monkey off the city’s back by getting rid of all traffic driving through the city because of the 710 gap.”

The roadway, he predicted, will be built.

But Caltrans officials say that many questions remain. And as a first step, Caltrans’ Snyder said, state and federal highway planners must review whatever comments the public formally makes on the report during the next month. Beyond that, he said, there still are questions about how the report might be put into place.

Then, he said, there is the even larger question of financing. Although President Clinton has touted rebuilding America’s infrastructure, including its roads, Snyder said: “I don’t think we’ve had a clear indication of how this project fits into that whole thing.”

Regardless, he said that state and federal highway officials view the gap as “a very intolerable and glaring” missing link in Southern California’s freeway system.

Freeway Plan The advisory panel on how to minimize the environmental impact of the Long Beach Freeway extension has recommended that the route use the so-called “Meridian Variation.” It roughly follows Meridian Avenue, except for a section between South Pasadena High School and Arlington Drive, where the route curves slightly to the west.